Sanctuary
by Meg Kenobi
Summary: Major Soontir Fel takes a walk in the woods


Author's note: I wrote this story about Major Fel, but "De-Star Warsed" it for my schools literary mag.  
  
I tried to post this as an original work, but it wasn't appreciated.  
  
Disclaimer: Come on, we all know this is illegal. Please don't sue me.  
  
Sanctuary  
  
The morning was crisp and alive with color. For the past weeks the sun had hung low and the land had been dulled by muted shades of gray . On this morning though, it was as if the world had awoken from a frostbitten slumber, and suddenly recalling Winter's imminent approach had attempted to sing out a final bit of glory before retreating to the numbing comfort of the dormant snow.  
  
A lone figure traipsed through the frosted grass, the dry stuff of Autumn crunching under foot. He was a man in his own respects, his chocolate eyes bearing the scars of too many years. Raven strands fell across his chocolate eyes, the color of the rough stubble blanketing the otherwise smooth olive skin that whispered of places far and warm.  
  
The man stood tall, for his time, at least, but this asset was hindered by the considerable  
  
limp with which he dragged his left leg. There were a great many stories about the limp's origin, but like most truths in life, the actual tale was stale and ordinary, free from heroism and rhetoric.  
  
Seating himself in a thicket that smelled of the cool damp, he felt a vein of release pulse  
  
through his body. His mind had been plagued by many thoughts when he had entered the wood; the War, certainly the War, his woman, his ship- more so the woman than the TIE lately,  
  
yet they had all faded into an immaterial haze under the shelter of the trees.  
  
The man rested his head against the weather beaten trunk of a towering paper birch,  
  
feeling a comforting strength about him, drawn from the knowledge that the tree had stood as long as he had and would most likely remain standing for many years after he was gone. The birch seemed out of sorts in the area, however, for these trees normally thrived on river banks or in marshlands . To the man, the tree's location was appropriate, for he knew that a birch would often spring up in the hollow of a forest fire. In his mind's eye he could picture the slick-skinned silver sapling bursting forth from the ash of destruction, like a green feathered phoenix; an omen of undisputable hope. Still, even the embodiment of procreation had felt the winds and rains of half a century cut across it's body until the bark had peeled and grown dull, so that it was barely distinguishable from the common oak.  
  
He let his eyes close gently, and breathed in the life around him. A multitude of small animals scritched, burrowed and dug all about him. He wished he could be one of them, burrow down and let the Winter pass, but as a human, a fool, he knew it was his job to challenge this Winter of despair. So many lives chorused in the depths of the forest, that he found himself lost in it all, not excluded, but just another beating heart tangled in the encompassing rhapsody. Here life was the only rhythm, and his breath kept perfec time.  
  
In a rare occurence, the man had achieved an instance of serenity. With the crawling tendrils of hazy morning light, a pacific air had consumed the forest floor. He played a delicate whit blossom between his fingers, its smooth continuity in rough contrast to his calloused hands. Sadly, Nature creates these instances to deystroy them.  
  
A twig snapped nearby and the man's eyes flew open. A young Private, First Class, stood at attention.  
  
"Sir, there is news at the front, you are needed."  
  
The others said the boy had promise, but this sentiment eluded the man, as the only promise he was aware of was survival. The man merely nodded at the boy, as he was little more, and sent him on his way.  
  
With a weary, haggard sigh he lifted himself from the ground and brushed the soil from the crisp pleats of his uniform slacks. As he drew another tired he payed his surrounding a final regard. To the naked eye, little had changed, but the man knew better. In the precious duration of his brief, yet strangely eternal stay, a mayfly had hatched and died, living it's entire life in a single morn. A thousand twigs had snapped under careless feet, a fungus had bloomed at the root oof a tree and an eagle had spread his wings and cried. Neither the man nor Wood would remin the same; both were forever changed. 


End file.
